


My Poor Insane Son

by logdate_unknown



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Crying, Gen, Minor Injuries, Negligence, Realization, Sickness, membrane is not the best at parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-26 13:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21375214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/logdate_unknown/pseuds/logdate_unknown
Summary: The professor isn't around a lot for his kids. He must finally face with the reality of his own negligence.
Relationships: None
Comments: 37
Kudos: 137





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired to wrap up this oneshot I had in my drafts for a while after reading the fic by EmeraldTooth called 'The Price to Pay.' Go and read it, it's super good with great art and it'll rip your heart out guaranteed!!  
I kept thinking about how the Membrane kids would be affected by Membrane just never being around. Here's a kind of thing that I headcanon might have happened after the series and before ETF. Enjoy!!

“Dad?”

The professor didn’t completely turn, nor fully register the tone of his son’s voice. Only that it was Dib, standing somewhere behind him, and that he certainly couldn’t stop now. 

“Not now, son,” replied the professor, in the automatic reply he reserved to curb whatever his son would tell him, whatever alien or werewolf or sasquatch he’d seen this time. 

“Dad,” said Dib, almost urgently, behind him, trying his patience. “I- I really need to talk to you. It’s really important. Just for a second, dad. It’ll only take a second.”

His son was rambling nervously; he had seen something. With a sigh, the professor rolled his eyes under his reflective goggles. “If this is something to do with the paranormal, as I’ve said, I don’t have the time.” He briefly flicked his glance up to the time. “Besides, it’s time you were in bed.”

It went silent, but Dib did not leave. He could hear nervous shuffling, and even his breathing, in the quiet. After some time, Dib spoke again, and this time the hopelessness in his son’s voice registered.

“Dad, do you like me?”

Membrane lifted his head, straightened his back, and looked dead ahead of him into the lab. “What?”

“D-do you like me? Like, like as a person? Do you like me?”

Membrane turned finally, and regarded with dawning horror the state of his child. 

Dib was shaking like a leaf, worrying his hands, staring desperately with wide eyes up at his father, who watched him flinch as he turned. The shakes were shivering, jerky shakes, that grabbed hold of his shoulders and oscillated down. His lower lip had been split, and dried blood had coagulated there like a blister. A dark bruise had formed around the cut, almost reaching his jaw. He thought Dib’s eyes were bruised at first, but saw that they were only deep, dark circles, and that his skin had no warmth to it. However lethargic and sick he appeared, he looked at Membrane, eagerly awaiting his reply.

“Dib,” the professor breathed, and completely dropped everything he was working on onto the work bench, kneeling forward so he could get a closer look at whatever had happened to his son. “Dib, what in the world has happened to you? Did it happen at school? Do I need to come and speak with your teachers?”

His robotic hands whirred as he reached out and took hold of Dib’s shoulders, trying not to squeeze too hard. Dib looked down at one hand, then jerked his gaze back up, still shivering. “I- I feel like nobody likes me,” he said, his voice trembling. It didn’t appear that what his father had said had fully registered. “You, you like me, right? Do you like me?”

The eerie, cold panic his son displayed was startling, and heartbreaking. If this was what he needed to know first, then of course he would placate him. The professor, his heart hammering in his chest, took Dib’s face in his hands. Even now it was hard for him to display affection, and it always had. That he had to answer this question troubled him fiercely. 

“Son, of course I like you. You’re my greatest creation. You and your sister. Why do you doubt that now?”

Dib coughed, choking on a sob. He held his father’s hands to his head, one hand holding more pressure than the other, and struggled around his breaths, as if it was suddenly impossible to take air in his lungs. He shut his eyes tight, making terrible, feeble noises of distress. It was clear he was exhausted. And probably delirious 

“Shh- shh, Dib,” said the professor, urgently. “Calm down now. You must breathe.”

Dib took in some shaky inhales, which sounded difficult, and like they pained him. Like his throat was closing up. He sagged into his father’s hold, letting himself cry, dislodging his glasses from their position.

How long had it been since Dib slept? His grades were fine, his demeanor, as far as he could tell, had been fine until tonight. Had he even looked at his son at all since- since when? Dread sank in his chest like a stone. 

“What happened?” He asked, patiently, again. He carefully removed the glasses from his face, setting them aside. “How did you get hurt?”

Dib’s unveiled eyes looked smaller and shining, half open now that he’d heard what he’d needed to, and as the tears fell, he didn’t look up.

“It… Zim’s been fighting pretty hard lately.” He had to take a big breath to say just that, and his words trembled. Dib’s face contorted after that, and tears slipped through his clenched eyes. 

“Where else are you hurt?” Pressed the anxious father. "Is anything broken?" Dib opened his eyes, and Membrane had never seen tears fall so quickly or so easily from anyone before. Not that he had really seen very many people cry. Even as an infant, though, Dib had never cried very much. It had worried Membrane, as he wondered if it was because he was a clone, but Membrane’s own parents were not alive, so it wasn’t as if he could ask them how often he himself had cried as a young boy.

It was murder on the father to watch him, grimacing as he cried. The sleeve of his coat fell down, and the professor noticed Dib’s wrist was bruised and swollen, flaring in angry reds and purples. Oh. That looked terrible. Membrane moved one hand, carefully taking Dib's forearm to observe the wrist, and Dib's trembling spiked.

“E-everywhere,” sobbed Dib, and leaned his weight into his father’s touch again. “Everything hurts.”

“How long have you been been like this? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Dib looked up, with some difficulty, but through a lens that the answer should have been obvious already. “You were busy,” he replied.

Membrane’s chest hurt. “Let’s take you home now. It’s time to rest.”

He closed his arms gently around Dib, feeling the full extent of the feverish, panicked shivering as he clutched him to his chest, extremely careful that his robot arms did not hold him so hard that he aggravated some unknown injury. If Dib wasn't even coherent to tell him exactly where he was hurt, as he would surely be able to do normally, then that worried him, too.

This was so startling, so out of character for Dib. Dib had always been self-sufficient, and intelligent. Despite his current ‘paranormal investigator’ phase which he dearly hoped would soon pass, he was endlessly proud of Dib, though it was difficult for him to say. 

Membrane carried his son up into the house from the lower labs, and found Dib’s room. Which was a catastrophe. Much of the mess was centered around his desk where his computer was, which was on, but asleep.

On the journey, Dib had calmed down significantly, and was now half-asleep in his father’s arms, finally letting himself rest after the relief he’d felt from hearing what he’d needed to, and was staring ahead distantly, as if he was not all there.

It scared Membrane half to death. Disturbed, he tried to feel his forehead for fever, but wasn’t sure how accurate his touch would possibly be, and didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary. 

He laid Dib down on his bed and began looking him over. He took the boy’s arm and pushed down the coat sleeve to examine his swollen wrist again. It seemed as if it hurt so bad that Dib couldn’t close his fingers all the way and was holding his hand open awkwardly as it was being examined.

“You could have at least called a doctor, if you thought I was too busy,” scolded the worried father. “Dib, it’s broken.”

“Oh,” said Dib, and avoided his eyes. 

Membrane pushed up Dib’s shirt, and saw his chest was mottled with similar dark bruising. All the way down his ribs and stomach. 

“Does it hurt to breathe?”

“No,” replied Dib, who despite his father’s ministrations had started to close his eyes.

As Dib slept, his wrist immobilized in a cast, his lip cleaned of the dried blood, Membrane sat on his son’s bed and held him.

When was the last time he had held him? When Dib was born? He really did wonder, trying to cast his memory back, and all that it picked up was the moment he gently drained the glass tube, reached forward with the utmost care, and gave the baby a shock to jump-start his breathing. When he’d held Dib, his son, a perfect clone, with joy and reverence, to his chest, as the newborn screamed at him.

When was the last time he’d done much of anything, for either of his children? Really made sure they were doing well?

Sure, they had always been very good at looking after themselves, but it occurred to the science mogul that perhaps they were so good at it because they had to be. He had made it necessary for them because he was never there.

What were things like at school? He had to have been making friends. Everyone loved a smart friend, right? His Dib was so intelligent, so fun to be around. He’d always been that way. The professor couldn’t imagine him without a group of friends his age. 

And what about that Zim? Didn’t Dib say he’d been fighting him pretty hard? Why? He was under the impression, with how often Dib spoke of him, that they were pretty good friends.

But he’d never been a very good listener, had he.

Membrane had always thought that it was obvious to his children that he loved them. It went without saying. He loved them so much that he couldn’t describe it. While he was never all that good at expressing emotion, he had always thought that his children had to know just how deeply he cared.

He guessed, now that he was faced with his son, asking whether or not he even liked him, that he hadn’t been making it easy for them with all the absence. 

He couldn’t get the image out of his mind, of Dib standing behind him in the lab, looking so very small, shaking and crying, begging for some validation.

In the silence of the night, he gently stroked back Dib’s hair, staring down at the bruise, the eyebags, the general lack of warmth that such a young person had no right to have. Children should be happy, bright-eyed, and well cared for. He’d been a very, very bad parent, that much was certain, and he didn’t even know how to begin going about rectifying it.

Somehow, without waking Dib, he managed to set him back against his pillow and draw the covers up to his chin, taking one last long forlorn look at the small form breathing evenly in the long bed, before shutting the door as silently as he could. 

Membrane crossed the hall to Gaz’s room, intending just to look at her once to make sure she was alright too. As it was very late, he didn’t expect her to be awake, and so he didn’t knock. The both of them were surprised when he came in. Gaz was sitting awake in the dark, playing her Gameslave. 

When she saw Membrane, her eyes opened all the way.

“Dad,” she said softly, “what’s going on? Why are you home?”

Again, there was that pain in his chest. “I felt I needed to come home, for you and Dib.”

She stared at him, the blue light from the gaming system illuminating her face and making her look ghostly. “Oh,” she said, and looked back down, obscuring her eyes again as she went on playing.

“May I come in?”

She grunted her affirmative, and he crossed the room to sit on her bed, clearing his throat before speaking. Gaz glanced up at him.

“Are you…” He rubbed his hands together, looking away, completely at a loss as how to start. “How are you doing in school? Are you performing well? Making friends?”

Gaz frowned at him. “Yeah, why?” She replied gruffly, deflecting him completely. “Do you have to ask me in the middle of the night?”

“I only wanted to know,” he replied guiltily. 

“You can ask me tomorrow, okay dad?” She abruptly shut off the game, throwing the room into darkness, and pulling up her covers. “Goodnight.”

Membrane sat there, stunned, but knowing how he deserved this. His goggles helped him see in the dark, how she was still warily looking at him. He wondered if she knew he could see her.

Tentatively, he reached forward, and rested his hand affectionately on her head. She didn’t try to move away, so he stroked her hair, somewhat awkwardly, brushing it down the right side. In the dark, she closed her eyes and sighed softly.

“I love you,” he told her earnestly. “It’s been brought to my attention that perhaps I don’t say it enough.”

Under the blankets, Gaz clutched the fabric hard, until her hands shook. 

“Yeah,” she replied after a few moments, trying to maintain the cruel, defensive undertone to her voice, but the weight of her father’s hand on her head was bringing tears to her eyes. Tears of relief. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had said a kind word to her, or looked in her direction and smiled, or was happy to see her. “I love you too, dad.”

Her voice trembled, and before she could stop herself, she scrambled out of the covers, tears streaming down her face, and flung herself into the professor’s arms, struggling to contain her audible sobs. 

“Gaz! Daughter!” He held her close, and the tears finally spilled, welling up in the bottom of his goggles. “It’s alright now! I’m here from now on. I won’t leave you for so long,” he promised. Membrane pulled her up against him and cradled her carefully, running his gloved hands through her hair. He was counting on his children to hold him to that promise.

For now, he could only make up for what time he’d lost to his negligence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gaz gets very sick. The professor is not there to help her through it until it's the worst it could possibly be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, this one really hit me hard. Grab your tissues.   
I wanted to make another one that focused more on Gaz, and it got longer than I originally intended it to be and also, I think, even worse than the first one. At least for me.   
But don't worry! I think it's a happy ending.

Dib knew his sister well enough that he knew something was off. They had this unspoken bond, this sort of agreement not to bring things up. At least Dib was the more outspoken out of the two, the more willing to point things out when they weren’t right and make a fuss. But even as Gaz tended to get vicious if you rubbed her the wrong way, she also wasn’t very likely to complain. Especially when it wasn’t about Dib, who she interacted the most with.

At school, she wasn’t well liked. The other children were frightened of her, and this was probably because of the defensive glares she cast with her eyes when another student dare cross her. Generally, she gave off an air of foreboding, and even her teachers did not normally speak to her unless they had to. 

Dib was wary of her, but also somewhat caring. He waited on the sidewalk for her to come out of her class on school days, and occasionally held her hand. They never acknowledged this verbally, and if and when the other children commented on this, they received a look of death from Gaz, which meant that when they were together, Dib was less likely to be bullied. And he appreciated that about her, however much she bullied him in private, too. 

It was hard to tell when something was wrong, but Dib knew her well enough to know. Even if it took a lot of ogling when he hoped she didn’t notice. 

It was almost imperceptible, but there was something that was missing. Something in the way she was standing. Dib watched her walk out, having thought about it all day during class since he’d noticed this morning. 

Normally, they didn’t speak, or even say hello. Dib greeted her this time, and she grunted, not opening her eyes completely. 

“Hey Gaz,” he said, having gotten up the courage, “you doing okay?”

“Be quiet, Dib,” she answered, but her voice carried half the weight it normally did. 

Impatient, Dib tested her. “If you say so.”

Normally, questioning her at all would let out a stream of threats and thunder and glaring. But Gaz didn’t reply. They walked like normal, all the way home, completely silent for the rest of the journey. Dib didn’t quite have enough information to be worried yet, but he watched her as closely as he dared. 

In class, Gazlene had started to cough. The other students glanced over their shoulders, but otherwise ignored her. They didn’t want to face with her if she was already not feeling well. 

She grimaced after coughing, considering it humiliating. It got bad enough that her teacher finally approached her.

“Hey, Gaz. Those don’t sound too good. You want to go to the nurse and lay down for a while?”

Against her own better judgement, she nodded, and the teacher wrote her a pass.

The nurse’s office was no help. The nurse didn’t much care to talk to her either, but let her lie down on the noisy sanitary cot paper for a little while before sending her back to class.

She knew she probably should have mentioned this, but she was aching, all over. Her chest hurt, especially, and she couldn’t recall the school ever having kept up the AC this high. Why was it so hard to breathe?

Silently, she wished her father would come home. She always secretly wished he was there, calling her Gazlene, or telling her he loved her. The sickness only seemed to make it that much worse. 

About a week later, Dib stood in the bathroom, fussing with his hair, when he heard the coughing. He stopped, hands halfway down his cowlick, listening. It was clearly Gaz- who else would be in the house? 

Everything in him hesitated. Gaz had been looking off all week. Just… not right. If she was sick, that would make a lot of sense. But he was terrified of a sick Gaz. It might mean she would be angrier, or even less patient with him, her fuse cut in half. 

They were the only ones home. It wasn’t as if he could go ask anyone for help. School started in half an hour. It was not a long walk to school, so of course they would still be able to make it, but if she was sick, it might be harder for her to walk there. Or to go at all. 

He didn’t want to leave her alone. As surly as she was, she was really his only friend. But he was terrified of going in that room.

Dib finished with his hair, and stood completely ready for school, standing in the silence as he heard more coughing. They were thick, gasping coughs, that concerned him greatly.  
There, he finally decided he couldn’t be scared anymore. He’d faced off with a dangerous alien and survived, plenty of times. He could handle his sick little sister just fine.

Still, though, he stood in front of her door, still listening, taking a while to finally knock. Better play things casual. Like nothing was wrong.

“Hey, Gaz? You ready to go?”

There was quiet on the other side until- more coughing. He sighed. 

“Gaz- okay, I’m coming in, okay? Please don’t get mad.”

He opened her door, to the room which was just about as messy as his was, with clothes strewn all over the floor, many tangled wires leading from her TV to the several gaming consoles and the various remotes they were tied to. Gaz laid on her back in her bed, facing up, her hands resting on the blankets beside her. Gaz usually slept on her stomach, so that she was on her back was a huge red flag for Dib. That, and her bangs were matted to her forehead with sweat. She was definitely sick.

Now what worried him most was the congested sound of her breathing. When he entered, she turned her head, coughing feebly, then stared at him from under her dark eyelashes without any malice.

“What do you want, Dib?” Her voice was hoarse, but not threatening at all. He relaxed some, coming into the room a little more.

“I guess you need to stay home, huh? Okay, I’ll call the school. I’m gonna stay home too. Okay?”

Gaz didn’t say anything, but seemed to relax a little. She turned away from him, facing the wall, and coughed a little more. Now that there was no wall separating them, it sounded worse. 

Dib spent his own allowance money to get her some medicine. He’d felt her for fever, and she did have one- about 102, when he managed to find the thermometer. It was bad enough that it had him rushing home from the store, terrified that he’d left her alone even for a little while. 

It surprised him that she was letting him do all this. He came home, dashed up the stairs, and made her sit up so that she could take the cough medicine with the fever reducer mixed in. He’d made sure to get the anti-congestion one, too, and helped her sit up so she could take it. 

Dib realized how worried he was for her. Gaz was his companion through life, his closest friend. No matter how they butted heads, he realized how much he loved her, and how much lonelier the world felt when she wasn’t herself. 

She got worse. Her fever got bad enough that she was shivering under the blankets. Dib had long forgone any worries of his own that he’d catch whatever she had. He just sat on her bed, talking to her, talking to her more than he ever had, while she listened with more patience than she ever had had for him.  
The next morning Dib woke to Gaz wheezing. She was on her back again, staring up, her eyes actually open. Dib had fallen asleep at the foot of the bed. He’d never even changed into his pajamas.

Dib got up at once, crawling to one side of her to feel her forehead again. The wheezing almost stopped his heart.

“Gaz, Gaz- hey! Wake up!” He went ahead and shook her shoulders, and she woke up with a few wet coughs.

Dib didn’t know what to do. He gave her ice-packs, medicine, tried to heat up the soup he’d bought, but she didn’t want to eat, and no longer responded to him when he tried to take her temperature. It was just as if she was in too much pain for anything. 

“Dib,” she said, finally, her voice barely there. After a whole two days of barely speaking, and a restless night with several interruptions. She looked scared, her red-rimmed eyes opening to stare at him. They were glassy and full of terror. “I can’t breathe.”

Dib’s heart did stop that time. If she was admitting this to him, it had to be serious. “O-okay Gaz. You’re gonna be okay. I’m gonna call dad.”

“He-“ she gasped, and coughed wetly. She was deathly pale. “Won’t answer.”

She strained to listen to him using the phone in his room across the hall. 

“Hey, uh, this is Dib Membrane. Yeah, the professor’s son. Listen, I know he probably can’t come to the phone right now, but my sister’s really sick. Yeah. I-I’m actually really scared. Are you sure he can’t come to the phone?”

Something stirred in her cold heart and unlocked. 

“I- yeah, she has a fever. 103, last time I checked. I-I’m not sure. She said she can’t breathe. Keep her upright? Okay. Okay.”

The rest of the call was mostly a series of ‘yeahs’ and ‘okays.’ When he came back, he didn’t look any more reassured, but she didn’t argue as he helped her sit up, and took her temperature again. She could tell he was trying to stay calm, and admired him for not freaking out. 

“The guy at the lab said he’s going to try and get dad to come home. He thinks you should probably go to the hospital.”

Gaz sat there listening, with the thermometer under her tongue. It hurt her to breathe, and she found she couldn’t really pay attention to anything. Things happened to her, but her memory didn’t retain them. The moment things came, things went. She was appalled that she wanted to cry. She hadn’t felt like crying in a long time.

When their father came home, Gaz was completely out of it. She was awake, but in so much pain that she couldn’t focus on anything else, even when he sat on her bed and reached forward, taking off one glove to carefully push the sweat-matted hair from her face with his mechanically whirring fingers, gently and worriedly calling her name- her full first name. 

She couldn’t respond. She didn’t think he was really there. 

They’d rushed her to the hospital. The professor had bundled up the tiny girl in blankets, cradling her protectively, holding her head under his jaw until it was time to buckle her up carefully in the back, Dib watching her carefully so that she didn’t fall over or anything like that.

The professor’s driving was careful, but desperate. There was no way he would risk any harm to his children, but he was terrified. Gaz didn’t sound like she was breathing all that well at all. He tried to think of the last time he’d cared for her when she was sick. She was three years old, and it had probably been the last time he’d taken any sick leave. 

They got her into a room in the children’s ward immediately- her being the daughter of world-renowned professor Membrane took care of that. 

What he feared turned out to be true. It was pneumonia. 

Membrane was furious. Not at the doctor, but at the situation itself. Gaz shouldn’t have been susceptible to it! She’d had all the vaccines!

Regardless, Membrane looked on to his little girl in the hospital bed with a deep, cold pit of dread in his heart. This should never have happened. If she’d had walking pneumonia for however long it had taken to get this bad, then he was to blame. He should have been there the moment she started to feel unwell. Damn him and his work. Damn the company he’d created, and his constant need to maintain it. Dib had had to take care of her all on his own, and that was something no child should ever have to do. His children were first and foremost. 

Dib sat fidgeting, his hair a mess, and looking pretty beat. Membrane sighed with appreciation for his son, but regret swallowed him up whole. He approached the young boy, laying a hand on his head and pushing the hair back gently. Dib looked up, looking tired and frayed at the edges, but beamed nervously up at the nervous father, who smiled with his eyes, the wrinkles peeking out from the edge of the goggles crinkling. 

“You did a good job, son. I’m very proud.”

Dib smiled, but looked down, and Membrane realized he was trying not to cry. His foolish, prideful son- was just like him. 

Gaz woke up a few hours later. It was hard to tell when she woke up, since her eyes always looked closed, but her hazy fever-filled eyes saw the blurry silhouette of her father speaking with another white-clad adult, and she burst into tears.

“Dad!” Her cry cracked in the middle, her throat sore and filled with thick bubbles, almost solid and choking her. At once, all eyes in the room turned to her, completely shocked.  
Delirious, tears and snot dripped down her face. She sobbed, unable to get a breath. The doctor came forward, trying to calm her down enough for her to breathe properly, but her half-concealed eyes were fixed on her father, shaking while she cried, like she was freezing.

Membrane was frozen to the spot before he rushed forward to her, taking her face in his hands. He produced a tissue from somewhere and wiped her nose, catching some tears with his gloved hand, also trying to hush her. 

“Daaa-ad,” she sobbed. This was completely out of character. For Dib, it was like he was having the fever dream, not her. Gaz never cried- and especially never acted this way around others. “W-why are you never ho-ome? I miss you, dad.” Her voice was only strong because of the desperate tears fueling it. 

“Gazlene, my darling child! You know that I-“

“I-is it because of me? I kno-ow I’m mean,” she begged, pawing at his arms. “I’ll be better! I swear!” 

She didn’t see the look the doctor threw the professor’s way, or the way all the color drained from what little skin was showing.

“No, no Gazlene! Never! I adore you just the way you are!”

“Plea-ease, please don’t go again,” she whined, and her body tensed as she entered another coughing spell. 

Dib was frozen solid, watching her break down in complete disbelief. Was this how she felt? This whole time? The boy couldn’t deny that he’d felt lonely, at times, laying awake at night thinking that the stress from having to deal with Zim all by himself was going to kill him, one of these days. 

Their father shifted so that he was sitting beside her, holding her tightly again as she shook with tears. She grabbed the sleeves of his labcoat in her little hands, and he rubbed her back until she could get her breath, leaning her forehead against his chest, all while the doctor tried to talk over it all. She looked at the professor with somewhat of a silent glare as she discussed the treatment, and the duration of her hospital stay. Dib said nothing, but felt awkward and estranged on the other side of the room, hands folded in his lap.

That night, they stayed in the hospital room with Gaz. Hours ago, they’d taken her to carefully suck out a great deal of the fluid from her lungs, and she had been sleeping ever since, still propped upright with a mountain of pillows, and with a tube connected to her nose that steadily fed her oxygen, just in case. 

The professor never once left her side when he was allowed to stay. Visiting hours had ended, of course, but no one dared ask the scientist to leave. Instead, he laid awake beside her, his arm around her shoulders, letting her know that he was there, and not about to leave again any time soon. 

There were other employees at the lab who could pick up the slack. This was a luxury he could afford, and should have afforded, so many more times than he had. He could start coming home at nights, being more attentive to his children’s needs. Never should Dib have had to look after her alone, nor should Gaz have gone to school however many times she had, feeling unwell. 

Membrane’s heart felt broken. He had never felt so much guilt in his life. Watching her cry like she had, grasping at him like he was already being pulled away from her, especially as she had always been so strong, was something he never wanted any of them to experience again.

Dib was sound asleep in a similar cot, and he wanted to grab him too and hold him, tuck them up into his chest and never let them go again. 

Knowing he could lose them any day now, as he loved them so much, was the horror filled reality he would have been heading for, had he continued along the same path.   
Gaz stirred slowly, and leaned her weight in his direction, sighing. Her breathing was much easier now, he was pleased to hear. 

“Dad?” She croaked softly. 

“I’m here, darling. I’m not going away. Go back to sleep.” It was lucky that she was already half asleep, because he didn’t want her to see him cry. 

In the low blue light of the hospital room, he undid the buttons of his collar with one hand, and pulled down the surgical mask covering his face, and wiped a tear before it could fall onto her head. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss onto the top of her head with his warped, scarred lips. 

“I’m not leaving you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHY..... AM I LIKE THIS????  
Alright but it really made me feel better to imagine the professor holding her and making her feel less alone. That's why I write this depressing stuff. I gotta make it better for the character and myself at the end.   
I've never had pneumonia, and I know I probably exaggerated for maximum angst, but I've gotten pretty sick before and people have always been there for me. I got to thinking- man, the guy's never home. What if they get sick? I couldn't imagine Gaz complaining at all. I can imagine Dib complaining, because he's way more vocal, but I feel like Gaz would get really sick before anyone really notices because her default state is intimidation.   
But, hey, I cried while writing this. Hopefully I made you cry??? Hopefully not? Whatever's more cathartic for you!  
Thanks for reading!! Be sure to tell me how I ripped your heart out in the comments!!

**Author's Note:**

> There we have it!  
Membrane, my dude, I love ya, but you have got to be there for your kids ya dungle!!!  
I kept thinking about how lonely Dib's character really is. He's the only one aware of this threatening alien, no one will listen to him, he has no friends, and his dad's never around. That's a lot of pressure for such a little kid. One of these days that's gotta make someone crack.  
Hope this broke your heart as much as it broke mine to write!! Your comments make my day!! Thanks for reading!!


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